


The Base Standard

by kiri_bronach



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 02:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18489412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiri_bronach/pseuds/kiri_bronach
Summary: Allison reflects on her childhood and compares it to her siblings'.





	The Base Standard

Looking at their childhoods, you might think Allison had it easy. That's certainly what she thought.

Luther was under constant pressure to be perfect. Diego barely fared better in that regard, pitted against his brother in competition that no one would describe as healthy. Klaus was literally haunted - tormented day and night by ghosts that drove him to drugs at a younger age than some kids even knew what drugs were. Five bore the brunt of the beatings, never seeming to have learned not to talk back to their father. Ben had a terrifying power that he had hated, that he'd had no choice but to use, that had ultimately gotten him killed. Vanya had had it drilled into her head that she was useless, worthless, nothing until the isolation stopped being something she was forced into and became something she thought she deserved.

But nothing set Allison’s upbringing apart. Sure, she'd been raised by a father who didn't love her. She'd gone years of her life without a name. She'd been shamed and struck and starved. She'd been forced into life threateningly dangerous situations before she was even a teenager. And while none of that was normal and none of that was good, it was the base standard of being a Hargreeves.

There was no defining feature to Allison’s childhood, nothing that made it stand out as shitty in a way that no one else's was. Put simply, while she’d been surviving _all that_ , her siblings had been surviving all that _and more_.

Which was why she found it so inexplicable, infuriating, even, that she was just as messed up as the rest of them. The rush of irrational fear she felt at her mistakes should belong to a sibling whose perfection was demanded more harshly. Nightmares belonged to Klaus and Ben, who out of all of them had seen the most death and gore. Depression and lack of self-esteem were Vanya’s domain, and rightly so as her sister hadn't been given any other options. She doesn’t want to be this way, but more than that she feels guilty for it, like she doesn’t have a reason to be so damaged. For every time she'd gotten away with something, there was someone who hadn't been so lucky.

And in the deepest, darkest parts of her mind, Allison almost wishes she wasn't so lucky either. She knows it's not rational. She knows that no one deserves to go through what she did, let alone worse. She knows she can never admit these thoughts to anyone for the offense that they would cause. It isn’t right to think this way. But it also isn't right that she should get all of the trauma when she only suffered half the abuse. She can't think of how her life went wrong without thinking about how it didn't. Her memories feel dramatised, their effects exaggerated. Her pain feels borrowed. And the only way she can wrap her mind around it is to think that her reactions would make so much more sense if only she had had it worse.


End file.
